


all my life I've been so lonely all in the name of being holy

by CourtneyCourtney



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Denial of Feelings, Emotional Hurt, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen, Internal Conflict, Religious Conflict, Repression, You Know - The Fun Stuff, self-delusion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-15
Updated: 2019-10-15
Packaged: 2020-11-27 23:03:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20956373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CourtneyCourtney/pseuds/CourtneyCourtney
Summary: It's a ridiculous thing for an ethereal being to worry about, not being enough. He was made to serve God. His purpose is to serve Her. He shouldn't have doubt, not in his place, not in his actions. And yet, Aziraphale feels himself being pulled. It isn't enough tobe. He needs to change.Maybe that's a lie. Humans, of course, need to change. They really should adapt and grow and make mistakes so they can learn and move forward. Aziraphale isn't in a position to make mistakes, though, which is why it's all the more frustrating to be pulled in all these different directions. Even when they aren't asking him to change in straightforward words, he knows when they want him to, what they're implying and when.(or, Aziraphale compares himself to Heaven's standards and doesn't measure up)





	all my life I've been so lonely all in the name of being holy

**Author's Note:**

> **The Voice of Crowley in Aziraphale's Head**: Damn bitch, you live like this?
> 
> Story is set any time pre-Antichrist delivery in the TV show 'verse
> 
> Title from Marina & the Diamonds' "Buy the Stars," as one does

"He wants, I want.

Dear God, wouldn’t it be

good enough just to drink cocoa?"

\- Anne Sexton, _The Ambition Bird  
_

Perception is funny, Aziraphale thinks. The way things can be seen differently to different people. There are always two ways about it, what it is or isn't. Unless it's one of those trick-eye puzzles, whether you see a vase or two faces close together, or a trick question that requires a third, unoffered solution.

The point is, though, that there is a right way of looking and a wrong way of looking.

(_"Funny if we both got it wrong, eh?" asked the serpent. "Funny if I did the good thing and you did the bad one, eh?"_

_(Aziraphale hadn't laughed._)

The point of perception Aziraphale is reflecting on now is how some things can be seen as too much, yet at the same time, to other people, not quite enough. Somehow in his millennia of existence, he hasn't cracked the code on that one, hasn't figured out which is the right way about it and which is the wrong.

Aziraphale sighs. It isn't up to him to decide. It never is and it never will be. That doesn't change the body count. Aziraphale has seen martyr after martyr, saint after saint go charging to their doom, to die uncertain if they'd asked the right questions or made the right choices. Of course, they had chosen right. They had to be right, given their unparalleled devotion to God. They just didn't know it themselves, _couldn't_ know it at the time. Their rewards were not to be given without an early punishment, and even with the punishment, no reward could be guaranteed. It's a leap of faith, doing the right thing.

Or rather, it is for humans. It's less of a leap when you know the Heavenly Host exists, when you're walking proof of it even if your existence goes unspoken.

("_Unspoken by who, hmm?" asks the serpent, imagined questions weighing on Aziraphale's mind like its coils. "By the humans or by your fellow feathered gits?"_)

It seems excessive sometimes, though. The church will bleed its believers dry, then get mad at them for running out of blood or not producing more blood fast enough. It’s not enough, to be good, to be nice and caring and holy. Still, they ask you to die. Still, they kill people who’ve said, “Actually, I’ve given it some thought, and I don’t believe death by stoning or having my face mauled off by lions is really the thing for me.”

Aziraphale can’t save them all. He _shouldn’t_ save any of them. He’s supposed to let God decide. He’s supposed to have faith and watch as nice and lovely believers die to further a cause that's already filled its quota of human sacrifices.

He can’t do it. But he does.

He cries over it. Of course he cries over it, in private, in places only the Almighty would try to find him. What kind of angel wouldn’t lose sleep over the years over all those sacrifices?

(_"Any of them," hisses the serpent’s voice in the back of his mind. "Name one of them, any of them, and I’ll show you an angel who’s never shed a tear in their sorry excuse of an existence."_)

But it's never enough.

It's a ridiculous thing for an ethereal being to worry about, not being enough. He was made to serve God. His purpose is to serve Her. He shouldn't have doubt, not in his place, not in his actions. And yet, Aziraphale feels himself being pulled. It isn't enough to _be. _He needs to change.

Maybe that's a lie. Humans, of course, need to change. They really should adapt and grow and make mistakes so they can learn and move forward. Aziraphale isn't in a position to make mistakes, though, which is why it's all the more frustrating to be pulled in all these different directions. Even when they aren't asking him to change in straightforward words, he knows when they want him to, what they're implying and when.

Heaven needs him to 'buck up,' he knows. Needs him to quit acting like a human since he isn't one. They need him less attached, less compassionate and bleeding-heart-like. He needs to be strong _or else_. He needs to be good _or else_. It's all stick and no carrot, really, but it's what he was made for. There isn't room for him to want a reward. There isn't room for him to be more human.

Crowley needs him to change as well, Aziraphale knows. For the first few years of their acquaintanceship, Aziraphale thought the demon wanted him to fall, wanted to bring Aziraphale all the way down to his level. Now he knows that Crowley wants something even more dangerous. Crowley wants him to be more human, like Crowley is now (or maybe always has been). Crowley wants Aziraphale to want things, to indulge in things that make him happy for no other reason than that they make him happy. Crowley wants him to be more than he really is. Crowley wants him to go faster. Crowley wants him to take everything, and to take everything Aziraphale can give him in turn.

It won't be enough, Aziraphale thinks, what he has left over after he's dealt with all the assorted saints and the sinners and his god-forsaken co-workers. He can't possibly give Crowley enough to make him happy, to make him feel needed and appreciated. That isn't who Aziraphale is.

_It's enough, it's enough, please let it be enough_, whispers the voice of the serpent, but that can't be true. Crowley doesn't love him. Crowley loves what he thinks Aziraphale could be, what Aziraphale shouldn't be. It's selfish. Aziraphale isn't allowed to be selfish. That isn't what he was made for.

He wasn't made to collect books though, either.

(_"If you'd be so kind as to stop poking holes in my argument, dear," thinks Aziraphale._

(_"It isn't me," hisses the serpent._

(_"It’s always you," Aziraphale replies, but again, he feels the twisting stab of doubt._)

Maybe that's why the written word has always held Aziraphale in its thrall. A book is a book. It is finished. It is published. Even if it isn't perfect, it is complete. Once a book is published and its earliest critics have died out, it simply is. No overzealous editors or protesters come in off the street to grab one of Aziraphale's books and tell him to forget he ever read it. No one pulls a book off a shelf and says, "Actually, we need to cull this entire subplot and reprint it." Even if you ban a book, people will remember. People will riot. Stories are relatively permanent, even if they're imperfect (and God bless all the Bibles he's found that support this point).

It’s not enough, though. Books can’t fill the void entirely. Humans are lucky in that they have each other to bridge that gap, to spin stories together without the need for blank pages and pens. Aziraphale loves them for that. He's tried his hand at joining them to stave off his loneliness, taking up with a few clubs here and a few circles there. He takes up dancing; he takes up dining. He wants too much, and he takes what he thinks he can get away with, takes what he can excuse as appreciating humanity or thwarting a life-long enemy. He takes, and he takes, and the years accumulate.

It's too much. It isn’t enough. It isn’t _right_.

It has to be right, though. It needs to be enough, and it needs to be right because there isn’t room for Aziraphale to be wrong. There isn’t room for him to be struggling on top of everybody else’s problems. He has to be fine. He has to be strong and good and right. It isn’t his fault that most everyone who preaches goodness and light fails to follow through on their words with action, but it’s up to him to step in and fix their mistakes where he can. He can’t measure up to God, but it will have to be enough. Without Heaven, there's no point to his existence, so he needs to justify existing here on Earth among the humans.

(_"The years belie we lived a lie," the serpent sings in the back of his mind._)

It won't do to have Crowley pointing out how different things could be, Aziraphale thinks. He can't afford to have the false hope of a different life, a more human life. It's like bearing false witness, the same as lying, and Crowley is always good at that.

(_"He's never seemed_ that _bad," says a voice that definitely does not belong to the serpent._)

The point is, though, that asking questions never ends well. Aziraphale realizes that now, the concept of perception be damned. He's gone and tangled himself in knots over silly ideas like "too much" and "not enough," when the whole time everything has been Just So. There's no such thing as too much or too little when God in Her infinite wisdom has allotted everything to be the way it is. Aziraphale has to assume he has the proper amount of faith. He has to assume God has taken the right amount of sacrifices. He has to assume Crowley is wrong about what Aziraphale could be because Aziraphale can't be anything other than what he currently is. That's the way things are, so that's simply the way things have to be.

(_"For now," warns the serpent._)


End file.
